#things2013

Thing About 2013 - Satin Jackets - "You Make Me Feel Good"

I'd say that I've listened to "You Make Me Feel Good" by Satin Jackets more than any other song this year. Making that assertion most years would be telling, since it'd probably be wrong in a way that could be easily demonstrated. Couldn't tell you what took home that dubious honor last year, but whatever guess I'd make at any given time would probably be off, influenced by imperfect memory or overwhelming nostalgia. So, remarkable that my pick for "song I've listened to the most in 2013" is actually the song that, according to last.fm, I listened to the most in 2013. 

No proof to back this up, but it seems rare, tantamount to the illusive 30-30 season in baseball, the alignment of what you feel like you wanted to listen to the most with what you actually listened to. Lord knows we live in a world of white noise, and what we hear certainly doesn't equate with what we want to hear, may not even equate with what we listen to. Those of us who regularly exert agency in the matter are hamstrung by circumstance more often than not, in need of background music that won't get in the way of whatever it is we're trying to accomplish, or songs that set a scene, or that won't offend the sensibilities of guests or neighbors who might be listening in. There's a sinister spectrum at work here, with Grouper on one end and Black Pus on the other, and rare is the diabolical Venn Diagram that should contain an intersection of any consequence. And yet, "You Make Me Feel Good."

So, it has miraculously bridged the gap between circumstance and preference, but that alone certainly doesn't make a piece of music remarkable. Indeed, put this on, and it may come across as simply another pleasant slice of house music in a time where such a thing is a dime a dozen.

Well, house music, they call it, but it's miles removed from "[the] Percolator". It's not a sweaty club, and it's not the space between the headphones and your ear drum - it inhabits idealized places that few of us will ever actually visit. It's the sunset over the Pacific Ocean in a part of California that can't possibly really exist. Palm trees with spigots for mango rum. Slightly burnt colors, brown, orange - maybe this is how people that are really good at surfing feel all the time. If so, as much as surfing seems really dumb to me - there's very little that's less appealing than getting all worked up to go sit out in the hot sun, bobbing, waiting for a wave, sunburns spreading, competing with guys who are more experienced at being relaxed and have bigger arms for something that amounts to the same reflex you show when you're getting on or off a crowded subway car - maybe I should give it a shot.

As to what's actually going on, it's that effortless combination of subtle percussive elements, a little hi hat fill, a reversed snare, a heavily reverbed tom, perfect, and I mean, perfect, vocal samples, that 303 bass, and something that could be a thumb piano but is probably a marimba or something. A symphony in reverb and delay - there's not a lot here that doesn't get spaced out, stretched, repeated, placed in a warm cave. Reverb is the "New York is a character in this film" here, and reverb, being a form of magic has its share of disbelievers. It's a matter of faith, something that can't be handled with facts and thus it's a starter of meaningless arguments. "Is there a place for reverb?" Obviously, yes, and it's here, and by here I mean, absolutely everywhere on tracks like this, because it's all an illusion, though not in the sense that someone is trying to put you into a specific room. It's an illusion of weightlessness and spacial disorientation. There's a flat, dry, four-four kick that keeps you grounded in reality, otherwise you might just float away, chasing the trails of the vocals off into whatever totally impossible space the reverb and delay is conveying. 

And if that sounds like something you need to be stoned to appreciate, then perhaps I'm overselling things. This is something you could put on in and H&M, though please, please, really don't do that. Matter of fact, forget I said anything. Just because something works as background music doesn't mean it should be relegated to that status. It's bittersweet every time I hear "Pulling Mussels From the Shell" while walking through  my grocery store, and that happens more often than you might think. Once you've heard a song while making mundane purchase decisions in public, it's like seeing a bad video for a song that deserves better, the stink just never quite wears off. "You Make Me Feel Good" should be played often, but it should also be kept close. With a name like "You Make Me Feel Good," it threatens to drift off into meaninglessness and depersonalization at the slightest touch, its charms exposed to a world that would appreciate them, but perhaps not cherish them fully.

Thing About 2013 - Earl Sweatshirt - "Doris"

"Doris" is ostensibly the moment when Odd Future got introspective, pulled back the curtain to reveal what was behind their act of jumping around, skaters without the skateboards, yammering convincingly about bodily fluids and drugs, telling tale tells that clashed against the fact that they looked like nice kids. In any case you wouldn't have caught Earl doing a whole lot of leaping around from the gettyup, not even a whole lot of glaring menacingly or yelling. Dude had a New Yorker profile before most people had really heard him do much. Hype was high, so his first post exile (I say that to be dramatic, not to comment on the actual circumstances of Earl's departure from the States) album was always gonna be an event not only in the sense of, "what's he gonna do," but also in the sense of, "what's gonna happen when he does what we think he might do, which is get introspective and talk about things that Tyler, the Creator doesn't really talk about." 

Well, not that much happened really, and that's great. Earl has always been a part of OF's mythology, if an only intermittent part of their actual rolling crew, so his brand of rhyming, his calm yet forceful presence has always been a part of their identity. Earl just being Earl is not a revelation for anyone familiar with Odd Future, except that, just by the power of his charm, the glow of his talent, it kind of is. He's the sort of rapper - not saying lyricist, and I'm not saying musician, though he's certainly both of those, too - that can put you on your ear with any sort of material. His voice and cadence are his true weapons, and for a rapper like that, when you hear them on a verse here and there, it can seem like a mirage, and in some cases can probably actually be a mirage. So we wait for a "real" full length, you know, one with songs produced by the Neptures and RZA, to see what's up, and that's why "Doris" is as exciting as it is - Earl delivers. He delivers what you'd expect from an Odd Future member, which is some stuff about drugs and doing stupid things and some stuff about women that's objectionable if you take it seriously enough,. But he also delivers some pretty off brand stuff about feeling abandoned by his father, and feeling a lot of pressure to do things he doesn't want to do, and, well, NOT doing drugs, and he delivers it all in such a fantastically compelling way, really riding the beat in a way you can forget people can do if you just listen to the radio. You can live inside Earl's delivery even when he's saying nothing about nothing.

Yet, as the media was psyched to see, there's the veneer of something new here. On "Sunday" he raps alongside Frank Ocean about, I dunno, an off kilter idea of settling down, dealing with love and a sort of tour induced home-sickness, coming off (and I mean this in the most positive way) like a college kid home in Cali from his first semester out East, all mixed feelings nostalgic about the warm weather, missing the snow, while Frank seems to talk about the Chris Brown incident, dropping, "just to wear that straight edge varsity you think's cool," like a slightly more endearing Big Sean (I find Big Sean endearing). While that may qualify as something newsworthy, it's also totally beside the point. Nobody listens to OF, even Earl and Frank, for conscious hip hop, and if you're trying to pin some narrative of, "look how this kids are cleaning themselves up," then that's gone past the line of misinterpretation into something weird and condescending. Part of the melancholy, weighed down mood (which, as an aside, makes this probably the best Wu Tang record of the year) could be attributed to Earl dealing with expectations just like these - expectations to produce an "I Need Love," or to soften the image of Odd Future into something that'll sell records to people who still buy records in stores. And as cool as this record is, let's admit that we shouldn't be contributing to artists being miserable just so they can make art about being miserable. 

Thing About 2013 - Kleenex Girl Wonder - "Let It Buffer"

As Graham Smith duly notes at at least one point on "Let It Buffer," you can't throw a rock and stick into an urban area these days without striking two musicians who will then take said natural objects to the internet to try and pawn them off for rent money and bitcoins. Growing up with people like Graham Smith, not to mention Britney Spears and Usher, rappers with Lil' prefixes, precocious teens doing it, or variations of it, for real, we all got the idea that the world was an oyster, our very own oyster world, for us. The skill sets were new and easy to master if you could work a computer and knew a little bit about both hip hop and music theory. Everything would be great, and look where it got us. 

Well, it got us to "Let It Buffer," it did - a record influenced by the passing of time, a timely record, a record very much of its time. If you want to talk about snark, or anti-smarm, you've got it in spades. If you want to talk about being bombarded from all corners by things you only barely understand, check, you can talk about that. If you want to talk about hip hop permeating every facet of existence to the point that there's probably something called, "Autotune the News: Conan O'Brien Meets the President of Finland," this'll give you some ammo. 

Or perhaps you have feelings about Northern California? Making an educated guess, that's what "Lintel Rktu" is about. The only thing more prevalent than references to pop culture here are references to computer culture, and Mr. Smith has a few choice words to say about the home of 21st century innovation. It comes close to seeming personal, the concerted push against Silicon Valley here. It may not be 2013's biggest anti-Cali pop hit, that's Shark?s "California Grrls", but it's close.

Not to say that this isn't a pop record. For one, it's melodic. The lyrics come fast enough that hey tend to obscure any chance at true singalong potential, but pop is always about more than being popular - it's about aspiration, a sense of being in the conversation, and there's a lot of conversation on "Let It Buffer". There's a song called "William Roberts" that namechecks Tom Lehrer, Tom Green, Harry Shearer, Tom Cruise, Jerry Samuels (had to look this up - the guy who did "They're Coming To Take Me Away"?), Bill Hicks, Bob Dylan, Robert Pollard, and of course, William Roberts himself, whose identity, given the context clues in a song about pretending to be a rapper, creating a persona out of an ego, ambivalence about artistic identity, is probably that of Rick Ross. It's been said that Mr. Smith lost touch with who he was, what made his earliest records good, and here he seems to be giving that thought some credence. The mention of Bob Pollard is a particular tell - when you've been compared your whole career, not always favorably to a guy who is maybe most famous for being in a Strokes video, what the fuck are you supposed to do with that? "William Roberts," I guess.

And while that's all very welcome and intriguing and great, "Mr. Big Philosopher," is the real nerve center of the record. You get some fantastically out there name drops that may actually be dream inspired, (or The-Dream inspired, God I'm just trying to keep up here) and then you get a chance to ponder whether he's saying "Kurds" or "curds" and whether it even matters and whether either one of them really makes sense, but after that it really picks up and I'd quote the whole rest of the song if I could, 'cause it's a clear picture hidden inside a whole lot of obfuscation, the heart of a notion that twelve other songs have hinted at while negotiating a path around. It's the lack of meaning in an ephemeral cultural landscape, the affirmation of simplicity's importance caught struggling with a desire to fully enlighten, it's the self doubt that was somewhat smugly implied in things like "Graham Smith Is the Coolest Person Alive" stated like an adult, with some understanding of where the rest of the world - the world that probably doesn't know Terius Nash from Cat Greenleaf, but might catch Joe Strummer and Beau Brummell - is coming from. It's the sound, to some degree, of taking your own advice.

Thing About 2013 - The Drones - I See Seaweed

There will be and probably already has been a lot written and said describing 2013 as a bloody, terrifying mess. After all, the guy who runs the largest store in the world bought one of it's largest newspapers, then threatened to send canned pears to everyone using flying robots, while brinksmanship over the fate of a totally out of control situation in Syria brought back shadows of a cold war that those of us who saw it would probably rather not be reminded of. A guy shot a bunch of children and we allowed our government to be shut down by people who don't understand the first thing about leadership or for that matter common decency. Food stamps were cut back, George Zimmerman got off, and all over the world, justice, once again, was not served. Another year full of similar, but not exactly the same, old tragedies, and if more proof is necessary, somebody is still gonna make a list and argue that some new record by the National was worth more than 40 minutes of disintrest and a milliliter of ether.

The Drones's 2013 album, "I See Seaweed," an album that only lets in light after your eyes have adjusted completely to the pitch black, fits right in with the times, but then again, so did their records from 2005, 2006 and 2008. There's a song called, appropriately, "They'll Kill You," that begins with the lyrics, "resolution for new year 2012," and there's a bit on "Why Write a Letter That You'll Never Send" that deals with a pope who had, almost impossibly, resigned his post by the time the record came out. The individual axes that the Drones grind maybe temporally specific, but the ire behind the grinding, the longing, and the expectations that have collapsed, those are timeless.

Some of the specific axes ground here are climate change, the pointlessness of running away from your problems, um, moats? (actually about economic equality, I think) and of course, the axes most important to rock and roll, the six stringed kind. Though he writes lyrics like nobody else alive, and sings like a drunk and sentimental former mining company layabout, it should not be forgotten that Gareth Liddiard also plays some of the most distinctive guitar around. Without getting too technical (actually this is pretty technical, feel free to skip ahead) he plays a Jazzmaster, uses the whammy on that thing better than anyone, including whoever you're thinking of, and fucking finger picks nearly everything in this weird way that I've never seen anyone else attempt, slung low, dive bombing, cycling between delicate plucking and mad wailing so simply you'd think it was actually how you were supposed to play the guitar.

As good as the guitar playing is, and it is very, very good, it is still dwarfed by the overall the clarity of the band's vision. It is the incisiveness of their wit, their mercilessly staked out viewpoint, which puts them into such relief compared to the uncommitted, vagary plagued artists who ceaselessly choke our memories with their meaningless wafts of hot air. Most bands are lucky to come up with one song, one lyric, one note, that holds together under scrutiny, one uniting idea that not only gives them an identity, but also a purpose for existing (as we say in English). The Drones already had a song that manage to accomplish this feat - "Oh My", from "Havilah" - and now we can add "Why Write a Letter That You'll Never Send" to that short list. Taking the form of a diatribe, a screed against the ills of modern society, it comes off with some of the best punchlines you'll ever get from a rock band, impugning not only fish in barrels like Bono and the Vatican, but everyone from anarchists to the military industrial complex, to, well, pretty much everyone. Nobody and nothing really gets out of it alive - to wit: "who cares about the holocaust / man, we didn't learn nothing there / and all its memory does is keep the history channel on air." Perhaps conveniently, the songs is framed as a letter mysteriously delivered to the speaker, from which he is simply reciting. Whether or not you take these tough thoughts on the holocaust and the plight of soldiers manipulated by outdated dreams into dying on foreign soil as those of the author, they are thoughts worthy of recognition, thoughts that many probably don't have, thoughts that might be best expressed through an Australian rock band who, if their touring schedule for this record is any indication, have more or less given up on building a real American following.

Thing About 2013 - Beyonce - "Bow Down / I Been On"

It's Friday and we're getting geeked. Less than two weeks 'til Christmas, and it's beautiful and cold here in New York, so we're all gonna go out and find some stupid use for a Santa hat tonight, revving our engines towards a solstice that will hopefully bring us some degree of solace in regards to what's been a kind of shitty year, despite what the Dow Jones might tell you. It's into that atmosphere that Beyonce has unexpectedly dropped her wild self titled album. No work gets done today, so let's take a moment to enjoy it (if we can get our torrents working) and leave any talk about "Beyonce" at that until we've all cooled off a little bit. 

That said, nothing is keeping us from talking about "Bow Down / I Been On", which until today stood as a fantastic song and perhaps if you look at Yeezus as a natural extension of Kanye being a crazy individual who of course was going to get real angry about baked goods, the most mind boggling release from a super-famous musician this year. Of course, with the information available to us now, it's clear that "Bow Down / I Been On" is no longer really one song, but actually more of what it sounds like - two fragments mashed together. We now know that the first half, the "Bow Down" half, is a fragment from "Flawless", while the second half, while it doesn't pop up on "Beyonce", was turned into a more fleshed out, Houston heavy remix, with verses from Bun B, Slim Thug, and Willie D. "Bow Down / I Been On" is a pop Frankenstein, no matter how you cut it, but perhaps a more manufactured one than was initially apparent. Maybe we should have seen this coming. After all, the "official" videos available on YouTube for "BD/IBO", which feature a bunch of looped and oddly manipulated footage (some of which seems to come from "behind the scenes" material), all come with some sort of weird marketing text superimposed on them - certainly signs that what we were seeing here was by no means actually "official." This, however, only made things extra exciting. Was Beyonce wading into the 21st century music industry as boldly as the likes of Death Grips or Lil B? For a minute it seemed like, yeah, probably, and today we've received our confirmation on that point. 

With the seeming success and audacious release mechanics of "Beyonce" it's likely that "Bow Down / I Been On" will be viewed in the future only in the context of the album it turns out it was intended to tease and surreptitiously promote, as one aspect of an odd and adventurous marketing/anti-marketing campaign, rather than what it was originally appreciated as - an excellent, tempora-panoramic, bat-shit song. And that's a shame. The shock of hearing Beyonce straight up cuss out her inferiors is still intact on "Flawless", and it still burns, but while the, I suppose the word is "proper" follow up to it, Chimananda Ngozi Adiche's empowering spoken word bit, is disorienting and effective, the added shock of hearing a pitch shifted (don't say autotuned) Bey rap, basically, and then talk about growing up with Houston's parking lot hip hop culture, is beyond. Not only does "I Been On" highlight Beyonce's hip hop credentials, which, I mean, she's married to Jay Z, but as she makes abundantly clear on this record, she doesn't NEED him to solidify her place in the music game, the rap game, the fashion game, whatever. She's got her own pedigree, and tossing off "I was in that Willie D video when I was about 14, looking crazy" is proof enough. Even if Miss Info can't track down exactly which video she's talking about, it's telling that there are at least two or three videos that she COULD be talking about - she was in a lot of videos that fit this basic description before she hit 18. That right there is amazing proof not only of Beyonce's well documented drive and dedication to music from a young age, but her less documented engagement in her hometown's legendary hip hop scene. You put that sort of thing up behind a Hit Boy beat, and a woman fiercely - and I mean that in an animal sense, not a Tyra sense - calling out her critics, and cotdamn.

Thing About 2013 - Jessy Lanza - "Pull My Hair Back"

It was certainly pre-Solange does Dirty Projectors doing Mariah Carey that the indie kids' confrontation with mainstream R&B went mainstream, but thinking back to where it all started, the eyes can get a little crossed. Year zero is a tough call, but at some point it became a well known fact that most of what we'd call today "hipsterdom" holds a deep, but usually not broad, appreciation for the likes of R. Kelly, Aaliyah, Usher, SWV. If there's a determining factor in where and why what we'd call today "hipsterdom" took to the likes of R. Kelly, Aaliyah, Usher, SWV, it stands to reason it has something to do with the predominant strains of hipness breaking down a long held predilection for the gravelly and untrained and allowing some room for real pipes. The equation of authenticity and lack of vocal polish being co-terminal with things like pets.com and multimillion unit first week sales, let's say, we've slowly entered a new millenium where taste and virtuosity don't (always) need to be at odds, and we can finally get some conceptual fiber with our smooth&silky R&B.

And while this could just easily be the introduction to an article about such deserving men and women as Ava Luna or, like, Miguel, we arrive today at Jessy Lanza, of Hamilton, Ontario, who has produced a fine, fine record called "Pull My Hair Back." A fine example of what can happen when you give a form (in this case, chill-bro electro) an infusion of electric R&B, While it's to some degree what you might expect from a Jeremy Greenspan (Junior Boy and co-producer here) production - it's airy, sexy, analog, laid back - it's also got the mix of thump and croon, the rhythm, and more than anything else, the feel, of left of center R&B, making it's more sonically adventurous than any Junior Boys output to date. iIf some rudimentary research into the matter is any indication that has as much to do with Jessy's fantastic vocals as it does with her extensive academic music background. 

So, what you get, on the title track alone, is wild high pitched synth blips and wobbly pads that sound like Timbaland in full alien mode, masterfully gated handclaps, no fewer than four snare sounds, oddly out of time arpeggios, the line "I don't give a fuck what you do," alongside signature Junior Boysy bubbly bass, and long stretches that make you want to lie down. This is a chillout album with range. "Keep Moving," as more of a banger, shows even more how you can get the ultimate choose your own adventure out of this stuff, with your predispositions leading down whichever rabbit hole best suits - you could awkwardly pop and lock to it, or trace its influences, or zone out.

Further exemplifying this range: if any song from 2013 calls out for Slim Thug verse, and deserves it, it's "5785021" (which should come with a pronunciation guide - here it's "five seven, eight fifty, two one", which is quite confusing given that this could just as easily be written as "578521". Anyway) . I single out Slim Thug here mainly because Slim Thug would sound awesome on this, but also because Slim Thug would sound more awesome on this than Mike Jones, whose sadly now disconnected (281) 330 8004 is the more than likely reference for the song's title, a string of numbers which, prefixed by the area code 905, is at the very least a Hamilton, Ontario phone number. One wonders whether Jessy's received any calls from enamoured (Canadian spell-check) fans at this number, and one hopes that she has. But her forthcoming nature in relation to her digits, in addition to her (incorrect) assertion here that "you know my address" is not only a gloss on her knowledge of Houston rap, or a comment on her social availability; it's also a reflection on scope. Mike Jones's honest divulging of his phone number was a marketing tactic, and a great one, but one that ran its course once he left the large but still finite confines of Houston. You won't find him soliciting phone calls these days. Jessy providing her contact information similarly speaks to a regional identification (she doesn't even give out the area code!) which is important because, while Canada should be give no short shrift, music like this comes at us internet consumers from all directions these days - Scandinavia, New York, England, Texas. The new hip R&B, malleable and, while not ahistorical, not overly concerned with anything predating the 808, is a global medium in need of some geographical grounding, and it's nice to see Jessy and Jeremy Greenspan (co-Hamiltonian) repping.

Thing About 2013 - Bunny's a Swine - "Calling Out"

Given that the members of Bunny's a Swine are close friends of mine, this will not be a review of their outstanding record, "Calling Out." I can't do that. The partiality police wouldn't let me hear the end of it. Instead, let's say this is a bitter, self-righteous plea, a flailing missive about how everyone always misses the point, a stupid love letter, unearthed in the middle distance of the future, not regretted, but not entirely understood, a "you don't understand me! Nobody understands me!" before slamming the door on Twitter, on Chris Ott, on well meaning DIY kids still growing into their slightly longer than regulation dorm room beds, on those who would have us all get so serious about the silly thing we call rock music.

Let's pretend for a minute that the problem with music today isn't the inability of musicians to make a living wage, or the fragmented landscape in which everyone chooses their soundtrack to the exclusion of anything foreign, or even the internet that dilutes our sound quality, extrudes poisonous comments, connects us all more closely, holding us deeper and deeper within our self selected communities - let's pretend that the real problem is a lack of perspective. If everyone listened intently to Bunny's a Swine, invested some time in them, we could kiss at least the excuse of myopic self interest goodbye. In this variety of perfect world, we'd all understand each other a little better, learn to embrace the small things, recognize the big things, and say fuck it to the medium sized things that really pose the most danger of sucking away our precious time and energy. Our perspectives adjusted, we'd be able to put our moneys where our mouths are, our hearts a little bit closer to our minds in the grand scheme of emotional health, and our feet somewhat closer to the place where we live. I can envision a world where some guy in artist relations at Sony looks at some guy that pulls a salary from Matador who looks at some clueless musician trying to scrape together money to repair an amp who looks at the sound guy giving him the coldest shoulder 'cause his amp is broken, and they're all looking at each other with, if not compassion, then understanding at least, that yeah, there's a system, and yeah, we've all got to look out for ourselves here, but we're all complicit - what you do to the least of these, et cetera.

"Calling Out" contributes to the creation of this theoretical world where we all "get it" because "Calling Out" is a wise album, ableit one made by people foolish enough to call themselves Bunny's a Swine and play a guitar that only has three strings on it. Fools though they may be, they've been at this long enough to have built a view that cuts pretty close to the heart of what most folks who make music or, hell, anyone that's trying to live some sort of uncertain, non-geopolitical, non-financially-determined dream go through on a daily basis. Doubt, anger, tender sentiment, a longing for stability constantly at war with a fear of boredom, which, let's face it, is probably just a fear of getting old and sick and having to endure another drive to the emergency room. I realize that sounds dour, and I apologize. Blame that on the fact that it's nearly pitch black at 5 o'clock here in my living room rather than the music, because "Calling Out" is actually pretty bright in it's outlook. "TV" and "South Carolina" even seem to present a possibility for a future where everything is fucked up but still ok, which I'm pretty sure is the best anyone is hoping for at this point. 

To actually talk about the music for a second, it does at least one thing worth mentioning - in a year when the revisionist history of 90s music made hopefully its final turn towards the school of thinking that has all the cool people listening to chimey, noisy, serpentine rock music, "Calling Out" manages to revisit some of these sounds, some of these feelings, without glorifying them or reveling in them. "Barnburner" is the best [insert 90s major label post indie rock band here] ripoff of the year, in the face of stiff competition, and "Greetings from the Bottom" is its antidote, a rallying cry for those left behind by the 20th Anniversary of Nevermind gold rush, those united by the polar forces of overdone nostalgia and underdone bank accounts. It also happens to have one of the best videos of the year, as far as meta-critique of rock and roll goes, and also as far as funny creative music videos go - an intersection that is certainly not a coincidence at a time when we could all use a laugh more meaningful than "we don't have a word for the noises of certain animals."

Thing About 2013 - Charli XCX - "True Romance"

What of "True Romance"? As far as evocative album titles goes, it's not one. Nobody really needs another record about love, you know, and if anyone's gonna tell me about something being "true" it probably isn't gonna be someone who wears gigantic platform shoes everywhere she goes. An album called "True Romance" is gonna be a pop album about love, natch, and whether we're talking about one person's experience of love, a la "Red", or some generic, idealized and compressed version of it, a la most other things, but let's say, Carly Rae's "Kiss" or, great as it is, Kylie's "Fever", it's probably gonna just take you on that familiar journey through all the well worn tropes, leaving you at the end with maybe two or three songs worth listening to a second time.

The platform shoes, the album title, they create expectations like these, which are an inalienable part of the pop music machine. According to press releases, artists are constantly confounding them, challenging them, refusing to conform to them, so they've got to have some purpose. "True Romance", much to its credit, does not seem to take expectations as a challenge, or something to be overcome. It's a rare album which fits neatly within any number of traditions, makes good use of a lot of well worn cliches, both lyrical and musical, but does it while putting across a unique vision. Pop-auterism without all of that junk about innovation.

"True Romance" is about young love, sure, but rather than simply taking the typical images of sex, adventure and heartbreak and setting them to new music, it manages to actually impart the feeling of being twenty, or younger than twenty, and being confused, and happy and sad about people you like and your relationships with them. It makes you feel like you're living a teenage dream. The term "concept album" should be approached and used with caution, but that might just be what we're dealing with here - a concept album about young love, not in the sense that it tells a coherent story, but in that everything about it is of a piece. It's a record with a real human heart, pumping the same blood through each song.

Yet, for a record about ostensibly "True Romance" there is a distinct surfeit of arch "this is what love is about" verbiage. Feelings are plainspoken, contexts, while not detailed, seem personal, each one adding an angle to your view of the young lovers in question. What details are presented are evocative, conjuring an image of someone who likes "board games, horror films with the super gore," raps about lighting an ex's truck on fire like only a four foot tall British white girl can, and yet still seems genuinely concerned that you'll think she's crazy for falling in love like this.

Oh, right - it should be mentioned that Charli XCX raps. It should also be mentioned that this is neither abhorrent, or even especially annoying, and to some degree that's due to context. The picture of love here isn't the kind that conquers all, or the kind that's destructive and dirty, but the kind that's vulnerable, shaky, hormonal. Everyone has that week when they try to see if they can rap, just like they have that week when they wonder if they're gay. There's no good money on Charli popping up on guest verses, but it's endearing (beyond endearing, really - it adds texture, shows Charli's range as well as her milieu) to hear some non-pro rapping on a record like this, partly because she can really sing. She can do sexy and breathless, she can soar a little bit, she's playful and weird. She's all the things she needs to be in order to sell what's going on, and she can turn on a dime just as well as the music can (and often does). When "You're the One"'s major key chorus falls back into the minor key verse, she drops from triumphant into dark and creepy like it's an everyday thing. And the point of it all is that it is - manic depression is the name of the game when you're dealing with true romance and Charli sells that like drugs to undercover narcotics officers.